Kivu conflict shakes the Congo

The Security Council’s decision to send more troops into the Democratic Republic of Congo makes Monuc the UN’s biggest peacekeeping mission, with authority to use all means necessary to protect the local population. But can this bring an end to an extraordinarily complex and deeply engrained conflict?

The stability of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the African Great Lakes region is once again under threat from the recent upsurge in violence in North Kivu. The fighting between troops from General Laurent Nkunda’s National Congress for the People’s Defence (CNDP) and the Congolese armed forces (FARDC), which began in the summer of 2007, has been extraordinarily violent: tens of thousands of refugees have fled their homes, rape is being used as a weapon of terror and looting has become systematic.

Since the first Congo war (1996-97) put an end to Joseph Mobutu’s 32 years in power, regional tensions have intensified along the DRC’s eastern border with Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. The perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide fled to Kivu in 1994 and have now regrouped within the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Kivu was also the starting-point, in 1996, of the “long march” of Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL), which enjoyed the support of Rwanda and Uganda and the blessing of the United States.

Once in power in the DRC, Kabila fell out with his Rwandan allies. Nkunda fought in the ensuing second Congo war (1998-2003) as a member of the Rwanda-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD). After the peace accords of 2002-03. he was briefly a member of the Congolese national army, then turned against the central government in Kinshasa and the UN peacekeeping mission (Monuc), and led some 5,000 men in rebellion.

As a Tutsi, Nkunda feared that the FDLR was preparing a new genocide. In line with RCD ideology, he particularly supported the Banyamulenge (Congolese Tutsis) who had suffered under Mobutu and rebelled during the late 1990s. He demanded that Congolese Tutsis who had escaped from recurrent violence in the DRC by fleeing to Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda should be allowed to return and recover what had been stolen from them. Nkunda continued to enjoy the support of Rwanda, where he (...)

Mwayila Tshiyembe is director of the Institut panafricain de géopolitique, University of Nancy II, France

(1) The regional powers and Congolese political parties involved in the war signed a series of treaties during 2002 and 2003, leading to an agreement signed in Sun City, in South Africa, which established a transitional government.

(2) This is in the spirit of the 1964 constitution, which stipulated: “There is a single Congolese nationality. As of 30 June 1960 this is granted to any individual, one of whose ancestors is or was a member of a tribe, or part of a tribe, settled on Congolese territory before 18 October 1908.”

(3) Nkunda promised to be bound by the election results, only to attack the national army and Monuc on the eve of the declaration.

(4) The failure to implement the Goma agreement – which called for the withdrawal of the FDLR, the disarming of the militias (including the CNDP) and the return of Tutsi refugees –- fed Nkunda’s suspicions.

(5) The amnesty granted to him under the Goma agreement excluded these particular crimes.

(7) After independence in 1960, Congo’s most south-easterly province seceded and was forcibly re-integrated, following UN military intervention, in 1963. Katanga was officially known as Shaba between 1971 and 1997.

(8) Report by the UN expert panel on the illegal exploitation of natural resources and other forms of wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, S2003/1027, New York, 23 October 2003.